Sunday, September 16, 2007

Not much news. Yesterday was Saturday and the upper and middle echelons of the medical profession had disappeared to the golf course. No doubt the same will be true today. Tomorrow is one of the many mysterious holidays in which Scotland revels (as well as taking all the UK ones) – I hope it doesn’t apply to doctors.

My husband continues to seem reasonably well and in reasonable spirits. He’s taking lots of pills, he says, and we presume the purpose is to steady the heartbeat and, I think, thin the blood. He’s managing his own diabetes and that now seems to be going all right. Alexander came over from Glasgow yesterday, appearing in good spirits. He told me to press firmly for information, which I will certainly do when doctors reappear on the wards.

I found a wall-chart yesterday with patients’ names in squares. His one had a sticker saying “Discharge in > 3 days”. So did lots of other people. But there was no telling when the sticker had been applied. It seemed sufficiently depressing that I didn’t mention it to him.

Not much knitting, either. No Princess. I entered some more stash into Ravelry this morning, and it didn’t appear, but experience has begun to teach that it may turn up later and that if I try to enter it again I will find that I’ve got the same yarn listed two or three times – and then it turns out to be impossible to delete the extras.

This didn’t happen in the early days of stash-entering. I have clearly passed some threshold.

Laritza (and everybody), I am Tayside00 in Ravelry. (A search on “Jean” would probably produce too many hits to be much use.) Do come round and have a look.

I have now counted, photographed, and entered three of the six plastic bins which are the last bit of stash to be done. (Although, as of now, only one of the three is to be seen.) Trouble is, I have arrived at the lace-yarn bin and that one will take days.

I continue to feel that this is a useful and salutary exercise. I look forward to cataloguing my books in the same way, but it’s no use tackling that job seriously until Ravelry will let me enter everything, not just the books in its inadequate database.

I found you on Ravelry. I saw your stash too!To catalog books go to:http://www.librarything.com/It is free up to 200 books, it connects with Amazon and several other libraries. Adding books is very easy.

You might find that discovering when the ward round of your husband's consultant usually takes place might help - you can insist on being present (and may be welcomed, varies lots). ALso, you can ask to make an appointment on the ward with the consultant or registrar (or SHO, next most senior). I expect you would rather thiis would take place at his bedside so you can both be there - or trundle him off to the office.

Over the weekend you might always be lucky and find that a member of his own consultant's team might be on and able to answer questions - or one of those who is on may be able to check in the notes and then respond (depends on how busy a weekend it is).

Being firmly insistent but smiling, as I am sure you would be, can reap dividends, as I can vouch for having once been one of said junior doctors on the wards...

Hope that all works out. I expect you are right re the drugs (blood-thinning and rate-controlling). The former can take time to settle down.

I'm bad, I would write on his chart "URGENT speak with wife (phone number)", and then deny any knowledge of how the message got there. You just play dumb and say, "That's so odd, but I am rather glad you called since I did want to speak to you," and fire away with your questions. Of course I know this is a very improper and un-British move...but I never claimed being born in England translated into manners at all.

Get well soon wishes to your DH. Nobody knows as much about his diabetes as he does!

I saw a thing at Ravelry about Flickr having time-out problems, so probably your photo issues is Flickr adjusting to the growth of Ravelry. If that's true, then things could get very interesting before it gets fixed!